Research: Stem Cell Treatment Leads To Remarkable Recoveries In Stroke Patients

NEW YORK (CBSNewYork)-- Injecting certain stem cells into the brains of stroke patients has led to some remarkable recoveries.

The procedure even worked in patients with long-standing strokes signaling some potentially groundbreaking results, CBS2's Dr. Max Gomez reported.

Five years ago, Sonia Coontz suffered a stroke that severely damaged her brain. It partially paralyzed Coontz on her right side and she could barely speak.

"Her speech was not very understandable. She couldn't order food or communicate well," Dr. Gary Steinberg, chair of neurosurgery at Stanford University, said.

Two years later, Coontz could still hardly lift her arm, but something changed just one day after an experimental treatment. She could now lift her previously immobilized arm over her head and move it around and her words soon began to flow.

"I woke up and immediately I could speak better," Coontz said.

"She's what we call one of our miracle patients," Steinberg.

Steinberg led the small clinical trial of 18 chronic stroke patients. Steinberg drilled a tiny hole into the patients' skull and injected modified human adult stem cells around the area of the stroke using a very fine needle.

"We put them around the stroke and that where they do their thing to recover the function," he said.

The stem cells came from the bone marrow of two adult donors and were then modified. The cells don't survive for long, but they appear to trigger a healing response in the patient's damaged brain.

"The cells somehow jump-start the system again," Steinberg said.

Other patients experienced remarkable results as well. As for Coontz, she is now married and pregnant with her first child.

The small study lacks a hard scientific explanation for the speed of functional recovery in some of the patients, but it's also hard to explain it with a placebo effect.

Researchers will now begin a much larger, better controlled study to prove that the stem cells work.